Badeaux gets 50 years for child predation

HOWARD RODEN

Published 6:00 pm, Wednesday, November 2, 2005

With the prosecuting attorney calling it "one of the most disturbing cases" of child predation he's encountered, former Woodlands resident Alpha James Badeaux, 64, was sentenced to 50 years in state prison for the aggravated sexual assault of a 7-year-old girl.

A jury in the 359th state District Court also found Badeaux guilty of indecency with a child/sexual contact and burglary of a habitation, both in connection to his first-degree felony conviction. He received 15-year sentences for the latter two convictions, which he will serve concurrently with the aggravated sexual assault charge.

According to Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney Robert Bartlett, Badeaux must serve a minimum of 25 years before he can become eligible for parole. The prosecutor had requested a life sentence, which would have resulted in a minimum sentence of 60 years.

Badeaux was convicted on Oct. 13 and was sentenced last week.

"They (the jury) gave me close to what I wanted," Bartlett said of the punishment determination.

According to Bartlett, Badeaux had become so "fixated" with the girl that he rented an apartment next to the girl's family after they had moved to another apartment complex in The Woodlands. It was at the Research Forest Apartments that Montgomery County Sheriff's investigators discovered Badeaux had cut a 2-foot by 2-foot hole in the sheetrock next to the girl's bedroom.

He then installed a fake double electrical plate in the wall of the girl's room so he could reach and touch the girl as she slept. Even after his arrest Badeaux claimed he used the hole in the wall merely to put money in the girl's piggy bank and never did he touch her sexually, Bartlett said.

"He never backed down from that story," the prosecutor said. "The girl's mother said it best. She said that he (Badeaux) is such a danger to my daughter that if he got out of prison he would get out and find out where she (the girl) lived. He was so obsessed with her."

Badeaux was convicted of burglary of a habitation for the way he gained access to the child's room.

Bartlett said the incidents of aggravated sexual assault and indecency with a child/sexual contact actually started in June 2004 at the other apartment complex in The Woodlands where Badeaux and the girl's family lived. The child would visit Badeaux's apartment to play with his granddaughter, but she later told her mother he would take her into another room, lock the door and sexually assault her.

Badeaux would offer gifts and treats, such as ice cream, in an attempt to entice her to continue the sexual relationship, Bartlett said.

"That was part of his 'grooming process,'" the prosecutor said.

The victim's mother contacted the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office in December 2004 after she witnessed Badeaux exiting and locking their Research Forest apartment with a key. It was later that same day the girl told the mother about the sexual assaults.

"It was then the girl made an 'outcry' about what had happened at the previous apartment complex," Bartlett said. "In my 16 years in the Montgomery County District Attorney's office it was one of the most disturbing cases I've ever tried. The girl was very bright and articulate. She testified beautifully, considering what she had endured."

Shortly after interviewing with sheriff's detectives in The Woodlands, Badeaux escaped to Louisiana. But he was arrested the following February in Monroe, La., after a search by the Lafayette (La.) Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and returned to Montgomery County for prosecution.